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For no particular reason, I’ve been thinking about how Palpatine’s Empire worked from the time it was declared, through the time the Senate was dissolved. That’s 19 years, and the Empire seemed pretty bad even with the Senate still in place. So how did Palpatine do things that subverted the Senate, and why did he need to worry about the Senate, at least for the first almost two decades of his reign?

Palpatine’s Toolbox

Palpatine’s status as Emperor meant he never needed to worry about being reelected. It was so important to stabilize the galaxy after the Clone Wars and the treasonous assassination attempt by the Jedi that it was best for galactic security to have a stabilizing influence in the executive branch. So Palpatine can’t be voted out.

Palpatine was also granted special powers during the Clone Wars that were never revoked. This seems to revolve around control of the military, meaning he can spend a whole lot and has direct control over its structure. The Republic didn’t have a standing military until the Clone Wars, they had Judicial Enforcement agents and the cooperation of local sector military, which were limited in size. Palpatine’s now got a standing military that can grow generationally and is just assumed to be part of the government, specifically under control of the executive/imperial branch.

It’s possible that the Senate retained the ability to amend what Palpatine could do with the military, not entirely unlike the USA’s War Powers act, where the President can order the military to take action for up to 60 days, but at that time, if the President is waging a war, it needs to be declared by Congress. There may not be a time limit on Palpatine’s powers, but there may be Senatorial oversight where they can vote to override something he’s committed the military to do.

In the United States, according to the Constitution, Congress gets to declare war, the President gets to command troops. Because of global conflicts like the World Wars, the President’s ability to act and react militarily unofficially expanded to allow for military deployment without actually declaring war. Also keep in mind that after World War II, the military had nukes, and the President controlled the military, meaning that, while unlikely, the President could maybe even nuke someone if they framed it as “not a war.” Instead of just being in control of the military in war time, the President now had organizations like the NSA and the CIA who are additional aspects of “national security.”

Neither the Korean War nor the Vietnam War were actually, technically, wars, and the War Powers act was a means of keeping the President from doing things like, I don’t know, sending troops into Cambodia to undermine North Vietnam’s supply lines which led to the Khmer Rouge killing about two million people. But both the President and the Emperor can get a lot done in the time between ordering military action and the response of the Congress/Senate to reign in that power. Also, it’s probably worth looking at the bit about the President potentially nuking someone without getting approval to declare war when thinking about Palpatine.

Structures and Power Blocks

It is also important to look at the structure of the galaxy and how that played into Palpatine’s abilities and influence. The galaxy in Star Wars has these broad categories:

• Deep Core
• Core Worlds
• Colonies
• Inner Rim Territories
• Expansion Region
• Mid Rim Territories
• Outer Rim Territories
• Unknown Regions
• Wild Space

We’ve got a few of these that “don’t count” when looking at the big picture. Wild Space is out there without much knowledge regarding the region. The Unknown Regions are broadly mapped but with little contact with any of the worlds inside it, from the Galactic Empire’s point of view. The Deep Core is a bunch of densely packed systems at the center of the galaxy that are just kind of there, and a pain to get to due to a massive black hole in the middle of the galaxy. But it’s a good place to hide things if you have mapped a hyperspace route to that place.

The Core Worlds are the oldest, most established worlds in the Empire. These are the wealthiest and most influential sectors. What that means from a galactic political standpoint is that if you keep turmoil from coming to the Core Worlds, it’s really easy for the Core Worlds to act like there isn’t any turmoil. This is where you have places like Alderaan, Corellia, Kuat, and Chandrila. If Palpatine loses these, he loses the money and the means of production. For example, Kuat and Corellia are major shipyards.

The Colonies, Inner Rim, and the Expansion region are all very similar to the Core by Palpatine’s time, wealthy compared to the rest of the galaxy except the Core, and fairly comfortable. The main difference is that the social pecking order of who’s important goes from Core, to Colonies, to Inner Rim, to Expansion region. Even though the galaxy is organized into a Republic just prior to Palpatine’s transformation of it into an Empire, there are a lot of Core Worlds that retain symbolic noble titles, and that fades a bit the further out you go.

The Mid Rim was the edge of the Republic for a long time. This is the region that is usually pretty comfortable but is more prone to dealing with uprisings and pirate raiders. In other words, this is the region of the Empire that you control by making sure they feel like they need the military watching over them because what’s beyond the Mid Rim is scary and dangerous.

For a lot of the Outer Rim’s existence, very few systems were part of the Republic or the Empire. You may have powerful sector-wide governments, but nothing centralized, and varying degrees of living conditions. This is the region where the Republic and later the Empire could buy goods and services that weren’t produced under the enlightened law of galactic society. “Hey, it’s not up to us to worry about if this was made by enslaved sentients, we’re just conducting trade with part of the galaxy we don’t control.”

You have some of the wealthier parts of the Outer Rim trying to get in on the official structure of galactic government, so you had places like Eriadu, where Tarkin is from, joining up, while still kind of doing things their own way, i.e. holding on to a military larger than the Republic allowed. The galaxy knows a lot of locations in the Outer Rim, and they only control the parts of it that are beneficial to officially control and allow the rest to do whatever they may do that is still conducive to trade with the Republic/Empire.

More of the Outer Rim was officially part of the Republic, and then the Empire, after the Clone Wars. Lots of military outposts were consolidated, lots of areas were incorporated either into the Republic or the CIS during the Clone Wars to keep resources or strategic locations from the other side, and in the end, obviously, whatever the Republic or the CIS annexed ends up being part of the Empire. The Outer Rim has lots of resources, less traditional wealth, and very little power on the galactic stage, because so many regions of the Outer Rim are isolated from one another. These are the people that get exploited the most by the rest of the galaxy. Places like Mon Cala or Eriadu manage to get some degree of official recognition earlier in galactic history, but people like the inhabitants of Ryloth get dumped on hard.

Another thing that’s part of the Outer Rim is the Corporate Sector, a region of space where the Empire lets the corporations run things “for the good of trade.” They are part of the Empire, but don’t have to play by its rules, so long as they provide value to the Empire and don’t cause trouble outside of their sphere of influence. This is where Canto Bight is located, and even in the New Republic era, it was still run by the corporations. The Corporate Sector was part of the Separatists during the Clone Wars, but mainly so they could sell to both sides, a proud tradition it continued through the Galactic Civil War and the First Order-Resistance War. Corporations are not your friends; they just want your money or your labor.

Strategy

That means Palpatine’s political strategy is to keep the Core Worlds, Colonies, Inner Rim, and Expansion regions rich and comfortable, keep the Mid Rim afraid of everything that isn’t the above region of the galaxy, and keep the Outer Rim from having much political leverage to complain about their exploitation. That also means you don’t want to crack down on the Hutts, Black Sun, or the Pykes too hard, because you need them to scare the Mid Rim and destabilize the legitimate power bases of the Outer Rim. You need to keep enough of a military presence in the Mid Rim that they appreciate it, but you don’t use it effectively enough to make them feel like it’s done doing its job.

All of this is great, except that the Senate can still overrule you if they stay unified, and if you play up their regional differences, they start feeling too independent. How do you manage that? Well, thankfully, the other aspect of the special powers granted during the Clone Wars to Palpatine was the installation of Regional Governors. These are people that aren’t elected, they’re appointed by the Chancellor/Emperor, and they get to make big regional decisions that stand unless formally rescinded by the Senate. This “streamlines” the operation of the galaxy to ensure that debate and petty differences don’t keep the galaxy from working as a well-oiled machine.

Most of the regional governors just need to do enough so that Palpatine doesn’t need to worry about getting something to pass in the Senate, but not enough to get the Senate to revisit the decisions the Regional Governors have made. That also means that if those Regional Governors make a decision that screws over one little, tiny system within a sector, who’s going to worry about correcting that? You just need to make sure those tiny little systems don’t add up too fast, before they get used to the idea that they weren’t screwed over, it’s just the status quo being maintained.

Palpatine’s Toolbox, Revisited

So, by the time the first Death Star was created, Palpatine had the following assets:

• A government-wide security agency that nobody thinks much about until it’s used (the ISA)
• An organization that suppresses religious thought that doesn’t align with the religious thoughts of the Emperor (the Inquisition)
• The ability to restructure the military to make sure the right people are in the right positions
• The ability to deploy the military if doing so is relatively quick and decisive
• The ability to spend a ton of money on the military without anyone looking at exactly where that money goes, just the total amount spent
• Appointed positions across the galaxy that can directly implement the Emperor’s will, as long as they do so at a pace that doesn’t rouse the Senate to action
• A scary border where you can convince a significant portion of your population that whatever is past that border needs to be constrained by government power

All of that is powerful out of the gate, but it’s understandable that you don’t want to play your hand too early. If you tell the comfortable part of the galaxy that they aren’t special, they might be able to see that they have more solidarity with the Mid and Outer Rims. If you make the Mid Rim too safe, the Mid Rim might join with the comfortable folk and decide that maybe you don’t need a huge military, and it’s time to start reigning in the budget and revisiting those special powers you’ve had since the Clone Wars.

Compounded Efforts Over Time

On the other hand, after almost twenty years of work, you have a security agency that can kill, imprison, and torture anyone you need on a concentrated scale. You have everyone important in the military chain of command that’s loyal to you and not the government at large. You have a military that has been building and recruiting on a scale larger than you did during the Clone Wars, and as long as you keep the spending spread out, it’s hard for any one branch of the military to be impeded. You have external factors like the Hutts that know exactly how much they can get away with to keep the population scared of them. You have regional governors that can implement your will in a manner that people have become accustomed to for almost two decades, to where locals look to them before their normal political structures for support.

Once you have all of that in effect long enough that people are used to you having that authority, and they know they can’t oust you from office, it becomes pretty easy to just remove one branch of government, because they’ve been ineffective and functionally unimportant for decades. People are almost relieved that a non-functioning thing has suddenly changed, because maybe if you get rid of something that doesn’t work, whatever comes next will be better.

Transitioning a Republic to an Empire

I would really hate to see an executive officer of a government that couldn’t be removed from office or censured in any real way, assisted by appointed government officials that can declare their will to be law outside of the structure of representative government, being able to use the threat of prosecution, incarceration, or death to cow their political adversaries. It would be terrible if there were some kind of protocol detailing an important aspect of their plans to consolidate power that people were desperate to inform others about, which managed to get ignored or suppressed whenever it came close to being exposed. It would be tragic if people that are comfortable ignored the threat that individual posed and took no action, or if part of the population were to be so controlled by their fears of the other that they don’t care what that absolute power means for the good of everyone. It would be devastating if laws began to favor the singular sanctioned religion approved by the singular head of government.

Anyway, I’m glad I felt like writing about Star Wars today and not politics. Can you imagine if Star Wars were political?

https://whatdoiknowjr.com/2024/07/13/the-completely-apolitical-story-of-palpatines-rise-to-power/

#AllianceToRestoreTheRepublic #CloneWars #ConfederationOfIndependentSystems #CoreWorlds #Disney #Empire #ff0000 #InnerRim #MidRim #Movies #OuterRim #Politics #Rebellion #SpoilersThisIsAboutTrump #StarWars

RT @[email protected]

Polish website Rebel has added a page for the upcoming Outer Rim Unfinished Business expansion and it includes IMAGES 👀👀👀👀👀

#OuterRim

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